Month: January 2011

  • History Will Record Well, the Recent Days in the Middle East

    By Stephen J. Hadley

    All eyes are now on Egypt and an Obama administration struggling to find its footing. The truth is that once revolutionary fervor emerges and a situation descends into crisis, any administration is largely hostage to events and the dilemmas are acute. Do we desert a longstanding ally, only to raise doubts about our staying power in the minds of other longstanding allies? Do we remain loyal to a longstanding ally even after he has clearly lost public support, only to alienate a people struggling to win their freedom? In the midst of a crisis like this, the options are few.

    Before the current crisis, there were good options. They were urged on the Egyptian government by a series of American administrations—including especially the administration of George W. Bush, in which I served. The United States pressed President Hosni Mubarak publicly and privately to encourage the emergence of non-Islamist political parties. Our calls for action were generally ignored and non- Islamist parties were persecuted and suppressed.

    The result was a political landscape that offered the Egyptian people just two choices: the government party (the National Democratic Party or NDP) and the underground Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. This sad outcome was President Mubarak’s own creation. He did it in part so that he could argue to successive U.S. administrations and his own people that the only alternative to his rule was an Islamist state. But it didn’t have to be this way.

    Some critics argue that no U.S. administration went far enough in pressing President Mubarak—including the administrations in which I served. As important as the “freedom agenda” was to President Bush, there were other issues—terrorism, proliferation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to name a few—that required us to deal with the Egyptian government. Perhaps as important, the Egyptians are a proud people. No nation wants to be seen to be giving in to public pressure from another state—even a close ally. In the end, the decision was President Mubarak’s. He made it, and he is now facing the consequences.

    At present, the two most probable outcomes of the current crisis are a lame-duck Mubarak administration or a Mubarak departure from power in favor of a transitional government backed by the Egyptian military.

    View Full Image

    hadley
    Associated Press

    An army officer who joined antigovernment protesters tears up a picture of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

    Under the first outcome, President Mubarak rides out the current crisis. Presidential elections are expected in September of this year. It seems unlikely that either President Mubarak or his son Gamal will conclude that under current circumstances they can run and win. That will leave President Mubarak presiding over a lame-duck administration. The issue will be whether he seeks to transfer power to another authoritarian strongman backed by the army or dramatically changes course and uses the upcoming presidential election to create a democratic transition for his country.

    The precedents for this latter outcome are few but not nonexistent. It is essentially the role that the Bush administration urged on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, which he played successfully in 2008. The resulting government is admittedly a weak one that continues to cause the U.S. real problems in Afghanistan. But it is a democratic government, and by its coming to power we avoided the kind of Islamist regime that followed the fall of the Shah of Iran and that has provoked three decades of serious confrontation with the U.S. and totalitarian oppression of the Iranian people.

    Under the second outcome, President Mubarak surrenders power and is replaced by a transitional government supported by the Egyptian military. The presidential elections then become the vehicle for transferring power to a government whose legitimacy comes from the people.

    Either way, Egyptian society needs time to prepare for these elections and to begin to remediate the effects of years of government oppression. The Egyptian people should not have to choose only between the government-backed NDP and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Non-Islamist parties need an opportunity to emerge to fill in the intervening political space. Time is short even if the presidential elections go forward as expected in September. The U.S. should resist the temptation to press for an accelerated election schedule. Hopefully wise heads in Egypt will do the same.

    Time and a full array of political alternatives are critical in the upcoming presidential election and the parliamentary elections that undoubtedly will follow. If given an array of choices, I believe that the Egyptian people will choose a democratic future of freedom and not an Islamist future of imposed extremism. While the Muslim Brotherhood, if legalized, would certainly win seats in a new parliament, there is every likelihood that the next Egyptian government will not be a Muslim Brotherhood government but a non-Islamist one committed to building a free and democratic Egypt.

    Such a government would still pose real challenges to U.S. policy in many areas. But with all eyes in the region on Egypt, it would be a good outcome nonetheless. With a large population and rich cultural heritage, Egypt has always been a leader in the Middle East. Now it has the opportunity to become what it always should have been—the leader of a movement toward freedom and democracy in the Arab world.

    Mr. Hadley was national security adviser to President George W. Bush.

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times.All Rights Reserved

  • Tipping point for Egypt’s downtrodden masses


    By Andrew England

    Published: January 30 2011 15:34 | Last updated: January 30 2011 15:34

    Outside the journalists syndicate’s headquarters in downtown Cairo, dozens of riot police formed menacing lines; helmets on, batons in hand. Activists had called a demonstration to protest planned amendments to the constitution, and as was always the case for such gatherings, the police were out in force.

    It was the first demonstration I covered in Egypt and it turned out to be a damp squib. That was four years ago and the security forces far outnumbered the handful of protesters. After some exuberant chanting everybody went home.

    Asked why so few people had turned up, the activists wearily talked of the apathy among many of their countrymen despite frustration with their lot; fear of the iron fist of security forces notorious for dishing out beatings and torturing detainees; and the sense that street protests would not bring change.

    This was Egypt, I was told, a country that had endured decades of autocratic rule and had a long history of defying doomsday predictions, with patient Egyptians more likely to employ their famous sense of humour to vent anger than take to the streets – perhaps a joke deriding Hosni Mubarak, the ageing president, or a muttered curse aimed at the police.

    Even after the dramatic uprising in Tunisia when questions were raised about where next in the Arab world, there was a sense that Egypt would not follow suit.

    The incredible scenes of the last few days have proved that there is always a tipping point. Thousands of Egyptians from all walks of life have braved teargas, rubber bullets and even tanks, to call for the removal of Mr Mubarak. Suddenly, for now at least, their fear of the security forces has been swept away.

    The scale of the protests has shocked even the most veteran observers of the Arab world’s most populous state. But the ingredients for the popular explosion have been simmering for years as the demographic and social pressures have built up.

    Over the last 50 years, Egypt’s population has swollen from around 50m to 80m, its people packed into just six per cent of the nation’s land mass, predominantly in the congested capital and the fertile Nile delta.

    As the population has grown so has the gap between the haves and have nots, with the rates of absolute poverty increasing from 16.7 per cent to 19.6 per cent between 2000 and 2005, according to World Bank figures.

    In recent years, an economic team within government has implemented reforms that have been lauded by the business community and lured in record foreign investment flows.

    Yet as the economy returned impressive numbers, the frustrations, or as one government minister put it “the pain,” of the vast majority of Egyptians intensified.

    As the cost of their basic goods soared, the wealth of the tiny elite became more conspicuous with luxury goods filling the shelves of new malls. Gated compounds hosting palatial villas and lush green grounds sprang up on Cairo’s outskirts, opulent islands of sanctuary from the pollution and chaos of the capital.

    “There’s a vicious circle of the small clique getting filthy rich and the rest getting impoverished,” said Nader Fergany, a former economics professor and author of the Arab Human Development Report from 2002 to 2005, as the economy boomed. “We have returned this country to what it used to be called before the 1952 revolution: the 1 per cent society. One per cent controls almost all the wealth of the country.”

    The grooming of Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son, to succeed his father merely exacerbated many people’s anger. For all its flaws, Egypt was not Syria or a Gulf monarchy, Egyptians would complain, and Gamal’s accession was a further insult to the masses.

    Increased freedom of the press and a fast growing blogging community also meant that allegations of corruption, government inefficiencies and torture have been reported with unprecedented vigour, sometimes amid accusations of hysteria.

    Now the genie has been unleashed it is impossible to predict the consequences. The only certainty is that the events in Egypt prove that politicians across the Arab world ignore the demands of their people at their peril. The assumption that frustrated masses who want better jobs and to be able to put decent meals on their tables will accept their lot and bow to the might of an autocracy’s security apparatus is looking increasingly hollow.

    Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. All Rights Reserved

  • As Egyptians Stand Up, the U.S. Must Follow

    An Egyptian anti-government activist, wounded during clashes with police, chants slogans in Tahrir square in Cairo, January 29,


    Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011
    By Romesh Ratnesar

    It is increasingly apparent that the crisis in Egypt will end in one of two ways: either the hundreds of thousands of people demanding Hosni Mubarak’s ouster will succeed in toppling him, or the Egyptian army will quash the demonstrations by force. Any expectation that Mubarak’s token gestures of “reform” — like appointing his intelligence czar as Vice President — would placate the masses has proven illusory. The people are not backing down. They won’t tolerate an interim government or wait until elections in September. Outside of resignation, the only option left for Mubarak is to order a violent crackdown, which the army may or may not be willing to carry out. A tense stalemate may last for a few more days. But sooner rather than later, something is going to give.

    How should we respond? The events unfolding in Cairo represent the most significant popular uprising in the Middle East since the 1979 Iranian revolution. This time, there are no American flags burning in the streets or students calling out “Death to the U.S.A.” Far from rebuffing American support, the demonstrators in Cairo have expressed disappointment that they have not received more of it. But based on statements issued by some U.S. officials this weekend, the Obama Administration intends to remain on the sidelines. After a fumbling initial response, in which White House press secretary Robert Gibbs described Mubarak’s regime as stable and Vice President Joe Biden suggested it was too soon for Mubarak to step down, the Administration has now concluded that there’s little chance that Mubarak will hold on to power. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the U.S. would support an “orderly transition” to a new government, though she did not explicitly call for Mubarak to step aside. Whether, when and how he goes is “something the Egyptians need to decide,” as an Obama aide told the New York Times. “We don’t get a vote.” (See pictures of the turmoil in Egypt.)

    True enough. There are decent arguments for the Administration’s strategy of calibrated caution. Washington can’t be seen to orchestrate an endgame in Cairo, even if it had the leverage to do so. The same Arab voices criticizing the U.S. for propping up Mubarak would howl even more loudly if we were to stage-manage his exit. Holding quick elections may well bring the Muslim Brotherhood or similar Islamist groups to power, at least in the short run. Egypt’s 32-year cold peace with Israel could be in jeopardy. At best, the post-Mubarak power struggle in Egypt will be contested and chaotic. At worst, it could set off a wave of upheaval across the greater Middle East at a time when the White House had hoped to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and solidify a coalition against Iran (not to mention win the future at home). Egyptian democracy, in other words, could wind up undermining our primary goal in the region: stability. (Read “Mubarak’s Defiance Makes Life Harder for Obama.”)

    The trouble is, stability doesn’t exist anymore. For decades, the U.S. has privately prodded Arab dictators like Mubarak to open up their political systems, even while plying them with weekends at Camp David and billions in American weaponry. It turns out that approach has bought us time, but not stability. The pace and scale of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have exposed not only the resentments of millions in the Arab world, but also the fecklessness of the strongmen the West considered its allies. The ease with which the demonstrators in Tunis, Cairo and Alexandria overwhelmed thugs loyal to the old regimes could embolden the masses in Amman and Sana’a, Yemen, and even in Riyadh, to do the same. There is every reason to believe this winter of Arab discontent will become an even more clamorous spring. (Comment on this story.)

    It’s time to get behind it. Obama’s choice, in Egypt and beyond, is no longer about whether to preserve stability or promote reform. The choice is to embrace change or be overrun by it. The forces unleashed in the Middle East may produce a generation of leaders that is less friendly to Washington than the current batch of autocrats. But the U.S. is better off welcoming the new democratic era than fearing it. Distancing ourselves from Mubarak and siding with the Egyptian people won’t damage America’s image in the Arab world; continuing to fail to live up to our values will. This President, after all, has already rejected the old strategic bargain, in which advancing U.S. interests required compromising on our ideals. As Obama said in his 2009 speech in Cairo, “America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them.” He may never have a better opportunity to prove it.

    Copyright. 2011. Time Magazine. All Rights Reserved

  • Obama and Cairo

    notebook

    Could it be any worse?

    Jan 28th 2011, 16:57 by Lexington

    Since the one thing the rioters seemed to agree on is that he had delighted them long enough after 30 years on the presidential throne, and should depart for Saudi Arabia, it is impossible to know whether his decision to brazen it out will quieten or inflame the situation. The latter, one imagines. But—and this is speculation only—it must be assumed that the president secured the backing of the armed forces before deciding to make his stand. Thus the stage could be set for a more violent confrontation on the streets, which remain thronged in defiance of an official curfew.

    Shortly after Mubarak spoke, so did Barack Obama. He called on the Egyptian president to “give meaning” to his promises to improve the lot of the Egyptian people. But all this makes it a cruel irony that Mr Obama chose Cairo as the venue for the big speech in 2009 that was designed to start to restore America’s relations with the Muslim world. One of the main promises he held out there—American help for Palestinian statehood—has recently run into the sand as the result of what even his admirers admit was a sequence of cack-handed diplomatic fumbles, notably the mistake of picking a fight over Israeli settlements and then backing down. Now he will be judged, not only in Egypt but well beyond, by whose side he takes in the showdown between Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian people.

    So far, the administration has been trying hard to avoid making a choice: Mubarak is our ally but we deplore violence and are on the side of “reform”, goes the line. Hillary Clinton has called for restraint on all sides and for the restoration of communications. She said America supported the universal rights of the Egyptians, and called for urgent political, economic and social reforms. This is a sensible enough line to take, but sitting on the fence becomes increasingly uncomfortable as events unfold.

    As for what is really going on behind the scenes in Washington, nothing is clear yet. A bloodbath that kept Mr Mubarak in power would be a tragedy in itself and a disaster for America’s reputation in the region. Perhaps the least bad outcome for America would be for Mr Mubarak to stand down, but with power passing to a person or group broadly friendly to the superpower. But who?

    The question of who would succeed Mr Mubarak, even if he died peacefully, has always been a riddle. He has never appointed a vice-president and was trying to wheedle his son Gamal into the job. If the (American armed and trained) army itself does not take over, there are various pro-Western grey eminences lurking behind the scenes. Omar Suleiman, the suave intelligence chief, is close to the Americans and has fairly intimate relations with Israel (UPDATE: he has now been named vice-president). Failing that, Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the IAEA nuclear watchdog, is at least a known quantity, though what America knows about him it does not much like. In American eyes he tilted too far towards Iran in his previous job, and is alarmingly hostile to Israel.But at least he is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    One consoling thought going the rounds in Washington is that the Brotherhood’s support is limited—and many of those demonstrating now against the regime would be appalled if the Brothers took over. But remember the Iranian revolution of 1979? That started with a broad group of opposition movements: secular leftists, liberals and trade unions as well as the Islamists. Only afterwards did the Islamists claim the revolution for themselves.

     

    Copyright Economist Magazine. 2011. All Rights Reserved

  • Time to end the Arab exception


    Published: January 30 2011 19:58 | Last updated: January 30 2011 19:58

    The unfolding drama in the battle-disfigured streets and opaque repositories of power in Cairo has an act or two to go before reaching catharsis. But one thing is clear. The army will try to ensure Hosni Mubarak is not forced out by the revolt and will instead ease him off stage.

    Egypt’s US and European allies should do everything they can to ensure his retirement comes soon and finally place themselves on the right side of history in the Arab world, of which Egypt is now the throbbing heart.

    Mr Mubarak has had to fall back on the army; and he has lost control of the presidential succession. For the first time in his 30 years in power he has been forced to appoint a vice-president – Omar Suleiman, chief of the tentacular Mukhabarat intelligence services – and thereby relinquish any hope he had to bequeath the presidency to his banker son, Gamal.

    The military establishment has too many interests vested in the regime to allow Mr Mubarak to be bundled off to Saudi Arabia, like his fellow Tunisian dictator, Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali. But the army will surely have told the president he cannot attempt to stay on in what would be another sham election due this September. The uprising and chaos of the past week have made clear what that would mean.

    Mr Mubarak seemed blithely unaware of this when, as Cairo burned, he addressed the nation on Friday night. In other circumstances it might have seemed an assured, even avuncular performance. At this moment in Egypt’s destiny, it was a dictionary definition of tin-eared denial.

    Appointing a former air force commander – like Mr Mubarak himself – as his new prime minister, and then naming his intelligence chief as his likely successor, is no cure for civic insurrection. The ageing pharaoh might as well try to blot out the sun with his finger. Egypt’s young rebels, who have raised the banner of freedom and insisted on his departure, are not risking their lives in order to see one set of generals replaced by another.

    Do the US and the west have a role in this drama, other than as a shambolic chorus? Yes.

    The Mubarak regime is at the centre of a network of regional strongmen the west has backed and bankrolled to secure stability in a neuralgic region, guaranteed oil supplies and the safety of Israel. As waves of democracy have burst over almost every other tyrant-plagued region in the past 30 years, the US and Europe have connived in an Arab exception – and Egypt is its exemplar.

    The west has struck a Faustian bargain with Arab rulers, who have blackmailed them into believing that, but for them, the mullahs would be in charge. There is unquestionably a risk. Arab despots have destroyed political and institutional life, leaving their opponents little option but the mosque and the madrassa.

    But what shallow realists in the west fail to grasp is that the risk grows greater the longer these corrupt regimes, incapable of meeting the aspirations of their young populations, remain in power. Instability is certain; it is the future that is up for grabs. For now, it is young, mostly secular democrats who have taken a courageous initiative in the streets. They deserve support.

    Instead of propping up tyrants for short-term and often illusory gains, western policy needs to find ways of stimulating the forces in Arab society that might eventually replace them. After the 9/11 attack on America, a misguided “they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms” industry emerged. No. What Arabs and Muslims hate is western support for those who deny them their freedoms.

    It is an important signal that Washington intends to review the annual $1.3bn stipend it has paid to Egypt’s army since 1979. The west needs to put its money where its mouth is, with a blatant bias towards democracy and its brave defenders, by supporting competitive politics and open societies, education and the building of institutions, law-based regimes and the empowerment of women – everything the Arabs, against the odds, still find attractive about western society.

    It is for the Egyptians (and the Arabs) to claw their way out of the pit of autocracy. The least they can expect from the west is to stop stamping on their fingers.

     

    Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.  All Rights Reserved

  • Egyptians Defiant as Military Does Little to Quash Protests

    Scott Nelson for The New York Times

    Egyptian protesters prayed Saturday in front of a military vehicles in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Saturday. More Photos »

     

    January 29, 2011

    Egyptians Defiant as Military Does Little to Quash Protests

    By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

    CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt struggled to maintain a tenuous hold on power on Saturday as the police withdrew from the major cities and the military did nothing to hold back tens of thousands of demonstrators defying a curfew to call for an end to his nearly 30 years of authoritarian rule.

    As street protests flared for a fifth day, Mr. Mubarak fired his cabinet and appointed Omar Suleiman, his right-hand man and the country’s intelligence chief, as vice president. Mr. Mubarak, who was vice president himself when he took power after the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat, had until now steadfastly refused pressure to name any successor, so the move stirred speculation that he was planning to resign.

    That, in turn, raised the prospect of an unpredictable handover of power in a country that is a pivotal American ally — a fear that administration officials say factored into President Obama’s calculus not to push for Mr. Mubarak’s resignation, at least for now.

    The appointments of two former generals — Mr. Suleiman and Ahmed Shafik, who was named prime minister — also signaled the central role the armed forces will play in shaping the outcome of the unrest. But even though the military is widely popular with the public, there was no sign that the government shakeup would placate protesters, who added anti-Suleiman slogans to their demands.

    On Saturday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Noble laureate and a leading critic of the government, told Al Jazeera that Mr. Mubarak should step down immediately so that a new “national unity government” could take over, though he offered no details about its makeup.

    Control of the streets, meanwhile, cycled through a dizzying succession of stages.

    After an all-out war against hundreds of thousands of protesters who flooded the streets on Friday night, the legions of black-clad security police officers — a reviled paramilitary force focused on upholding the state — withdrew from the biggest cities.

    Looters smashed store windows and ravaged shopping malls as police stations and the national party headquarters burned through the night. Two mummies were destroyed in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, the country’s chief antiquities official said. Then thousands of army troops stepped in late Friday to reinforce the police. By Saturday morning, a sense of celebration took over the central squares of the capital as at least some members of the military encouraged the protesters instead of cracking down on them.

    It was unclear whether the soldiers in the streets were operating without orders or in defiance of them. But their displays of support for the protesters were conspicuous throughout the capital. In the most striking example, four armored military vehicles moved at the front of a crowd of thousands of protesters in a pitched battle against the Egyptian security police defending the Interior Ministry.

    But the soldiers refused protesters’ pleas to open fire on the security police. And the police battered the protesters with tear gas, shotguns and rubber bullets. There were pools of blood in the streets, and protesters carried at least a dozen wounded from the front line of the clashes.

    Everywhere in Cairo, soldiers and protesters hugged or snapped pictures together on top of military tanks. With the soldiers’ consent, protesters scrawled graffiti denouncing Mr. Mubarak on many of the tanks. “This is the revolution of all the people,” read a common slogan. “No, no, Mubarak” was another.

    One camouflage-clad soldier shouted through a megaphone from the top of a tank: “I don’t care what happens, but you are the ones who are going to make the change!”

    By Saturday night, informal brigades of mostly young men armed with bats, kitchen knives and other makeshift weapons had taken control, setting up checkpoints around the city.

    Some speculated that the sudden withdrawal of the police from the cities — even some museums and embassies in Cairo were left unguarded — was intended to create chaos that could justify a crackdown. And reports of widespread looting and violence did return late Saturday night, dominating the state-controlled news media.

    “How come there is no security at all?” asked Mohamed Salmawy, president of the Egyptian Writers Union. “It is very fishy that the police had decided to leave the country completely to the thugs and angry mobs.”

    The Mubarak government may have considered its security police more reliable than the military, where service is compulsory for all Egyptian men. While soldiers occupied central squares, a heavy deployment of security police officers remained guarding several closed-off blocks around Mr. Mubarak’s presidential palace.

    Before the street fights late Saturday, government officials had acknowledged more than 70 deaths in the unrest, with 40 around Cairo. But the final death toll is likely to be much higher. One doctor in a crowd of protesters said the staff at his Cairo hospital alone had seen 23 people dead from bullet wounds, and he showed digital photographs of the victims.

    There were ominous signs of lawlessness Saturday in places where the police had abandoned their posts.

    In the northern port city of Alexandria, some residents were unnerved by the young men on patrol.

    “We’re Egyptians. We’re real men,” said a shopkeeper, brandishing a machete. “We can protect ourselves.”

    Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, said that he observed a group of soldiers completely surrounded by people asking for help in protecting their neighborhoods. The army told them that they would have to take care of their own neighborhoods and that there might be reinforcements Sunday.

    “Egypt has been a police state for 30 years. For the police to suddenly disappear from the streets is a shocking experience,” Mr. Bouckaert said.

    State television also announced the arrest of an unspecified number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group long considered the largest and best organized political group in Egypt, for “acts of theft and terrorism.”

    It was unclear, however, what role the Brotherhood played in the protests or might play if Mr. Mubarak were toppled. There have been many signs of Brotherhood members marching and chanting in the crowds. But the throngs —mostly spontaneous — were so large that the Brotherhood’s members seemed far from dominant. Questions about the Brotherhood elicited shouting matches among protesters, with some embracing it and others against it.

    If Mr. Mubarak’s decision to pick a vice president aroused hopes of his exit, his choice of Mr. Suleiman did nothing to appease the crowds in the streets. Long trusted with most sensitive matters like the Israeli-Palestinian talks, Mr. Suleiman is well connected in both Washington and Tel Aviv. But he is also Mr. Mubarak’s closest aide, considered almost an alter ego, and the protesters’ negative reaction was immediate.

    “Oh Mubarak, oh Suleiman, we have heard that before,” they chanted. “Neither Mubarak nor Suleiman — both are stooges of the Americans.”

    Many of the protesters were critical of the United States and complained about American government support for Mr. Mubarak or expressed disappointment with President Obama. But either because of Mr. Obama’s Muslim family history or because of his much-publicized speech here at the start of his presidency, many of the protesters expressed their criticism by telling American journalists that they had something to tell the president, directly.

    “I want to send a message to President Obama,” said Mohamed el-Mesry, a middle-aged professional. “I call on President Obama, at least in his statements, to be in solidarity with the Egyptian people and freedom, truly like he says.”

    The unrest continued in other areas of Egypt and reverberated across the broader region, where other autocratic leaders have long held on to power.

    In Sinai, officials said that the security police had withdrawn from broad portions of the territory, leaving armed Bedouins in control. At least five members of the police, both law enforcement and state security, were killed, officials said.

    King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia blamed unnamed agitators for the demonstrations in Egypt. The Saudi Press Agency quoted him saying: “No Arab or Muslim can tolerate any meddling in the security and stability of Arab and Muslim Egypt by those who infiltrated the people in the name of freedom of expression, exploiting it to inject their destructive hatred.”

    And in Yemen, dozens of protesters took to the streets of Sana in solidarity with Egyptian demonstrators, local media reported. There were large antigovernment demonstrations in Yemen last week, as critics were inspired by the protests that forced the downfall of Tunisia’s president.

    The Egyptian government restored cellphone connections, turned off Friday morning in an apparent effort to thwart protesters’ coordination. But Internet access remained shut off Saturday.

    The army moved to secure Cairo International Airport on Saturday. The Associated Press reported that as many as 2,000 people had flocked there in a frantic attempt to leave the country. Flights were available, but often rescheduled or canceled later in the day.

    As night fell, bursts of gunfire could be heard throughout the city and the suburbs. And the groups of armed young men stopped cars at checkpoints every few blocks throughout the city. Several were visibly coordinating with military officers, even setting up joint military-civilian checkpoints.

    One group on the Nile island of Zamalek was ripping up sheets to make armbands that they said soldiers had instructed them to wear. A group at the base of a central bridge kept a case of beer nearby to cheer themselves. And many swelled with pride at their role defending their communities and, they said, their country.

    “Who controls the street controls the country,” said Dr. Khaled Abdelfattah, 38, patrolling downtown. “We are in charge now.”

    Kareem Fahim, Mona El-Naggar, Scott Nelson and Anthony Shadid contributed reporting from Cairo; Souad Mekhennet and Nicholas Kulish from Alexandria; and J. David Goodman from New York.


    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

  • F1 TV: The Bigger Picture

    Saturday 22nd January 2011

    F1 TV: The Bigger Picture

    F1 TV: The Bigger Picture

    Last week Adrian Newey gave the Watkins lecture at the Autosport International Show. Named after the long-time F1 medical supremo Professor Sid Watkins (who still heads up the FIA’s Instutute of Motorsport Safety) it covered the arrival of the new moveable rear wing for 2011.

    Newey told his audience that he was worried that the new rear wing would make it too easy to overtake in the season ahead. “The difficulty of overtaking is overstated,” he said. “What difficult overtaking does mean is that when somebody does it, it is truly memorable. If racing becomes too much like NASCAR slipstreaming, it’s going to lose some appeal to me.”

    In a week where increased TV figures for 2010 were released, Newey’s sentiment that ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it’ would seem to have some justification. He’s not the only one banging that drum, though. FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh also told Autosport.”It is very fashionable to say that what we need in F1 is more overtaking. I lost count of moves last year, as Lewis (Hamilton) in the first four races did about 39 competitive overtakes. So they are there. (But he clearly didn’t lose count).

    “I don’t think overtaking is an important as some people think it is. It has become a bit of an obsession. To be honest, some people with a lack of creativity have jumped on the bandwagon and are saying that is what we need to do.”

    So, there you have it. Two figures at the top of the sport saying that things are fine, we don’t need to be too embarrassed about boring races like Abu Dhabi where neither World Championship contender Mark Webber or Fernando Alonso could get close enough to the car in front to make an overtaking move – let alone try one.

    Dig a little deeper into the TV figures and it’s more worrying, though. We had more races last year, in more countries. New countries, such as India and Russia are going to be hosting a GP so should be starting to take an interest. Russia had Vitaly Petrov’s progress to follow (for a few laps anyway).

    We had the return of the grandees Ferrari and McLaren to the front of the grid following the year of wilderness where Brawn battled it out with Red Bull in the battle of the lightweights. Ferrari’s 2009 performance was well below par added to by Felipe Massa’s Hungaroring accident. In 2010 the single most popular team – by a mile – was back on form.

    In 2010 we had the sporting comeback of the greatest weltmeister there’s ever been in F1, Michael Schumacher. We had the intrigue of the new teams, the Korean GP, team-mates colliding and all the juicy acrimony that ensued, plus a final race where four drivers could have won it.

    So you would think that the barnstorming 2010 viewing figures of 527 million viewers would be well above 2009…? Wrong. In 2009 the figure was 520 million. In 2008, the year when Felipe Massa battled it out with Lewis Hamilton at Interlagos, it was over 600 million. Economists would say the underlying trend is not good.

    If you were to strip out all those things that made 2010 such a gripping season – maybe Ferrari’s return to form alone – then the figures would have gone down. No surprise then that Bernie Ecclestone is bringing in High Definition coverage for 2011, because he needs to arrest the slide.

    That is also why we need a moveable rear wing device. Martin Whitmarsh may enjoy reciting the statistic that Lewis Hamilton made 39 overtaking moves in the first four races of 2010, but how many did he make in the last four? The reason Lewis was so prolific in the early stages of last year (apart from qualifying so badly) was because he had an F-duct and nobody else did. McLaren’s genius idea gave Button and Hamilton their own stallable rear wing which they could deploy wherever they wanted on the circuit – not within a delineated zone as planned for 2011. They could also deploy it when they wanted, they didn’t have to get a green light from race control. Once the other teams had got their version of the F-duct sorted we were back to square one.

    The new moveable rear wing may not be the solution to make races more exciting, but it’s a start. The fact that TV figures haven’t returned to the Massa vs Hamilton levels of 2008 should be a warning shot for all concerned.

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  • Egyptian Army Called In as Protests Rage

    Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

    Smoke rose from a car set ablaze near Tahrir Square in Cairo.

     

    January 28, 2011
    By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL

    CAIRO — After a day of increasingly violent protests throughout Egypt, state media reported that President Hosni Mubarak ordered the military into the streets to back up police struggling to contain one of the most serious challenges to his long and autocratic rule.

    The president also imposed an overnight curfew, but fighting continued on the streets of Cairo, the capital, and smoke from fires blanketed one of the city’s main streets along the Nile. The ruling party’s building was in flames at nightfall, and dramatic video footage on Al Jazeera showed a crowd pushing what they identified as a burning police car off a bridge.

    CNN said that Mr. Mubarak was expected to deliver a televised address, though it was unclear when that would happen.

    Demonstrations began earlier in the day as thousands poured from mosques after noon prayers, growing increasingly violent as protesters clashed with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. The demonstrations, on what protesters called a “day of wrath,” were on a scale far beyond anything in the memory of most residents.

    The unrest in Egypt came after weeks of turmoil across the Arab world that toppled one leader in Tunisia and encouraged protesters to overcome deep-rooted fears of their autocratic leaders and take to the streets. But Egypt is a special case — a heavyweight in Middle East diplomacy, in part because of its peace treaty with Israel, and a key ally of the United States. The country, often the fulcrum on which currents in the region turn, also has one of the largest and most sophisticated security forces in the Middle East.

    As darkness began to fall on Egypt, Al Jazeera reported a brief respite in the violence as some police and protesters agreed to hold their clashes to allow for evening prayers. But the chaos continued afterward.

    At least one person appeared to have been killed in Suez, east of Cairo and the site of some of the most violent clashes. Reuters reported that protesters were carrying a man’s body through the streets as one demonstrator shouted, “They have killed my brother.” Details of his death were not immediately clear. According to the Associated Press, Egyptian security officials said they had placed the most prominent opposition figures, Mohamed ElBaradei, under house arrest, but that could not be independently confirmed and reports throughout the day had been contradictory.

    Shortly before, police doused Mr. ElBaradei with a water cannon and beat supporters who tried to shield him. “This is an indication of a barbaric regime,” said Mr. ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as he took refuge in a nearby mosque. “By doing this they are insuring their destruction is at hand.”

    Near Tahrir Square, protesters set fire to a police truck as police lobbed tear gas to try to block access to a key bridge across the River Nile from the island of Zamalek. Some demonstrators stamped on photographs of the president and others chanted “Down, down with Mubarak.” The acrid stench of tear gas spread across the capital reaching up the windows of high-rise buildings. Television images showed plainclothes security policemen beating protesters.

    At Al Azhar in old Cairo, thousands of people poured from one of the most iconic mosques of Sunni Islam, chanting “The people want to bring down the regime.” The police fired tear gas and protesters hurled rocks as they sought to break though police lines. From balconies above the street, residents threw water and lemons to protesters whose eyes were streaming from tear gas.

    Similar demonstrations were also reported in the cities of Suez, Alexandria and several others, including Al Arish in northern Sinai and Mansour in the Nile Delta region.

    Although the police beat back protesters in many places, they appeared to be struggling in parts of Alexandria, where protesters snatched batons, shields and helmets from the police. Honking cars drove up and down a main street, holding police riot shields and truncheons out the windows as trophies. A burned out police wagon blocked an intersection. A car turned on its side poured black smoke.

    In a stunning turn of events, one pitched battle in that city ended with protesters and police shaking hands and sharing water bottles on the same street corner where minutes before they were exchanging hails of stones and tear-gas canisters were arcing through the sky. Thousands stood on the six-lane coastal road then sank to their knees and prayed.

    Internet and cellphone connections have been disrupted or restricted in Cairo, Alexandria and other places, cutting off social-media Web sites that had been used to organize protests and complicating efforts by the news media to report on events on the ground. Some reports said journalists had been singled out by police who used batons to beat and charge protesters.

    One cellphone operator, Vodafone, said on Friday that Egypt had told all mobile operators to suspend services in selected areas of the country. Vodafone, a British company, said it would comply with the order, Reuters reported.

    In Alexandria, as soon as Friday prayers ended, a crowd of protesters streamed out of one mosque, chanting “Wake up, wake up son of my country. Come down Egyptians.”

    Police there closed on the crowd, firing tear gas as the demonstrators pelted them with stones. A stone struck the officer firing the gas from the top of the truck and the truck pulled back, but reinforcements quickly arrived and officers marshaled a new offensive.

    The protest in Alexandria turned into a block-by-block battle. The riot police managed to push the demonstrators one block back from the mosque, sealing it off from both sides and slowly advancing behind the tear-gas truck.

    Several women shouted “dirty government,” leaning from the balconies of their high-rise apartments to hurl bottles down on the police. Officers pounded their clear shields with their billy clubs and chanted in unison.

    “We wanted this to be a peaceful demonstration, but we are all Egyptians,” said Ahmed Mohammed Saleh, 26, a protester in Alexandria who had been struck by a rubber bullet.

    In Cairo, too, an eerie silence fell in one section of the city at midafternoon, as hundreds of protesters began a prayer session in the middle of the street, according to live images from Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel. Protesters bowed their heads as smoke billowed into the air behind them from the skirmishes between demonstrators and riot police.

    Despite predictions otherwise, there were only sporadic protests elsewhere in the region. The Yemeni capital of Sana, where thousands had gathered a day before, was quiet Friday. Across the Middle East, attention seemed focused on Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the most influential Arab satellite channels, broadcast nonstop coverage of the demonstrations in Cairo.

    “It has blown up in Egypt,” read the front page of Al Akhbar, an influential leftist daily newspaper in Beirut. “Today all eyes are focused on the mosques in the land of Egypt, where the protests are expected to reach their peak.”

    The protests across Egypt have underscored the blistering pace of events that have transformed the Arab world, particularly among regimes that have traditionally enjoyed the support of successive administrations in Washington.

    Earlier this month, entrenched autocracies seemed confident of their ability to ride out the protests. But, just two weeks ago, on Jan. 14, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled abruptly into exile after weeks of protest, and his departure emboldened demonstrators to take to the streets in other countries.

    Images of the lowly challenging the mighty have been relayed from one capital to the next, partly through the aggressive coverage of Al Jazeera. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have given the protesters a potent weapon, enabling them to elude the traditional police measures to monitor and curb dissent. But various regimes have fallen back on a more traditional playbook, relying on security forces to face angry demonstrators on the streets.

    On Thursday, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had remained formally aloof from the earlier protests, seemed to be seeking to align itself with the youthful and apparently secular demonstrators, saying it would support Friday’s protests. But it was unclear what role the Brotherhood had played in Friday’s protests, which seemed to be spearheaded by angry young people and to include a cross-section of Egyptians. Even some of the capital’s smartest neighborhoods such as Zamalek and Maddi were caught up in the turmoil.

    David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by, Kareem Fahim, Mona El-Naggar, Liam Stack, Dawlat Magdy and Stephen Farrell in Cairo; Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet in Alexandria, Egypt; Anthony Shadid and Nada Bakri in Beirut, Lebanon; J. David Goodman in New York; and Mark Landler and Andrew W. Lehren in Washington.


    Copyright 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights reserved.

  • Ins and Outs of Calling via the Net

     

    January 26, 2011

    Ins and Outs of Calling via the Net

    By DAVID POGUE

    Correction Appended


    This week’s e-mail bag brought a note that echoes the sentiments of many others:

    “Hi David! Am I the only one getting really confused by all the free/cheap Internet calling options? Would you mind clearing the steadily occluding waters of Skype, Google Voice, Line2, FreePhone2Phone, and so on? Your fan, Caroline C.”

    I loved this e-mail message for two reasons. First, I knew that the answer might make a great column.

    Second, you so rarely encounter the word “occluding.”

    All right, Caroline, here’s the story.

    The world of phone calls is changing fast. Any time some service is both essential and expensive — like phone service — you can bet that somebody will invent less expensive alternatives.

    As faster Internet connections caught on, it didn’t take long for clever programmers to realize that the Internet could transmit voices.

    The world was suddenly full of programs (Skype, iChat, Google Talk, various Messenger programs) that let you make free “phone calls” to anywhere, as long as you and your callee were both sitting at computers.

    Then came the era of cellphones that could connect to the Internet. What a mind-boggler! Doesn’t that mean that app phones (like iPhone and Android phones) could, in theory, make free “phone calls” over the Internet, bypassing voice networks? Your Internet calls would never use up any of your minutes. You’d save all kinds of money. You’d rock the very foundations of the telecom world.

    Well, we’re getting there. With a few technically complex exceptions there’s still no app that offers all three of these elements: free calls, to regular phone numbers, from your cellphone. In most cases, you can choose only two of the three. For example, you can make free calls to any phone number — but only from your computer or landline phone (Google Voice). Or you can make free calls from your cellphone to other owners of an app (Fring, Skype, TruPhone) — but not to actual phone numbers.

    To prepare this report on the state of Internet calling, I made a lot of calls in all kinds of different configurations: to a cellphone, to a landline, over WiFi, over cellular, and so on. Over time, it became clear that Internet calling apps represent an excellent exercise in expectation-lowering.

    For example, compared with regular cellphone calling, Internet calls usually take longer to connect. The sound quality is almost always inferior; you’d describe it as muffled, faint or distant.

    Finally, the voice delay is measurably worse on Internet calls. During each test, I conducted a little experiment: I told my calling partner that I was going to count to three, and asked her to say “three” simultaneously with me. Even on a typical cellphone call, I hear her “three” distinctly late — a half second or so. But on Internet calls, that delay is usually a full second or even more. Don’t try to practice your comic timing on an Internet call.

    Ordinarily, calling apps connect to the Internet when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot. When you’re not, these apps can connect to the Internet over your cellphone company’s data network. In that setup, though, the results are disappointing; the sound is muffled and delayed, and, if you’re driving, the calls drop frequently. Internet calling apps are generally worth using only when you’re on Wi-Fi.

    Exaggerating the abilities of these apps is par for the course. Skype and Fring, for example, claim to permit phone-to-phone video chats, even when you’re not using Wi-Fi. In practice, the quality and delays are so horrific that the feature is unusable.

    Despite all of these drawbacks, though, these apps offer two unassailable benefits. First, of course, they can save you a lot of money. If you make most of your calls over Wi-Fi, you can downgrade to a cheaper cellphone calling plan, because you’re using fewer minutes. (If you have Line2, Pinger or Google Voice, you can also cancel your text-messaging plan because they offer unlimited free texting.)

    And second, these Wi-Fi apps let you make solid calls indoors — precisely where cellular coverage is weakest.

    All right, then, Caroline: here’s a rundown. Most of these apps are available for iPhone and Android phones. Each recreates your phone’s existing phone-calls app, complete with a dialing pad, Recent Calls list, address book (inherited from the one already on your phone) and so on. All offer very cheap calls to overseas numbers.

    SKYPE Free “calls” to anyone, anywhere in the world, with Skype on their computers or phones — which is a lot of people. The company says it is averaging 124 million users a month. If both of you are on Wi-Fi, the call quality is insanely clear and realistic, more like an FM radio broadcast than a cellphone call. Despite the clarity, delay problems can come and go during the call. Delay can still be a problem, though.

    To call actual phone numbers, it’s $3 a month for unlimited calls within the United States, paid in advance; there are all kinds of other plans. (With most of these apps, billing can get complicated, and you should not expect tech support of the caliber supplied by your cell company. Line2 is the only app here, for example, with a human staff on its tech support line.)

    You can send text messages for 11 cents each. But recipients’ replies come to your phone’s regular text-message app, not to Skype, so you can’t see the back-and-forths in the same app. And you pay for the replies at the standard carrier rate.

    TRUPHONE Unlimited calls to landlines in 38 countries, or cellphones in 9 countries, for $13 a month. Like all of these WiFi calling apps, TruPhone turns an iPad or iPod Touch into a Wi-Fi cellphone. No text messaging.

    FRING This app’s strength is its ability to connect to a lot of other services, like Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Yahoo Messenger and AIM — either with “phone calls” or typed chats. As with Skype, you can make calls to phone numbers only by buying credits in advance; you’re billed 0.7 cents or 0.9 cents a minute to domestic landlines and cellphones. Sound quality isn’t great. No text messaging.

    LINE2 This app gives your phone a second phone line, with its own phone number. It’s smart enough to place and receive calls over Wi-Fi when available, and over the cell network otherwise; $10 a month buys all the Wi-Fi calls you want, to regular phone numbers. It’s the only app here that offers true phone-to-phone text messaging, which is very useful. My only beef: the app takes too long to notice that it’s on a Wi-Fi network before you can place a call, sometimes 15 seconds.

    GOOGLE VOICE Google Voice is free. It offers a million glorious features — transcripts of your voice mail messages, for starters, and free text messages, which is huge. It does not, however, save you any money on cellphone calls; it places calls over the regular cellular network, so it doesn’t conserve cellphone minutes. (Google Voice can make free domestic calls from your computer or a landline, not from your cellphone — at least not without a tricky app called Talkatone.)

    FREEPHONE2PHONE This service works on any phone, not just app phones like iPhone and Android. If you listen to a 10- or 12-second ad, you get a free 10-minute call — to landlines in 55 countries.

    To use it, you start by dialing a local number, which you look up at FreePhone2Phone.com. After the ad plays, you dial the country code and number; sound quality is excellent. Beats using calling cards, that’s for sure.

    TEXTFREE WITH VOICE TextFree, this app’s predecessor, gave an iPod Touch its own phone number — and gave you unlimited free Wi-Fi text messaging. The new free “With Voice” app adds voice calls from Wi-Fi, with a fascinating payment twist: you earn free minutes by downloading certain promoted apps (say, 15 or 30 minutes each). You can also buy minutes cheaply (for example, 250 minutes for $5). This app comes breathtakingly close to turning a Touch into a full iPhone — at a fraction of the monthly cost — which makes it catnip for teenagers and those even younger.

    So there you have it, Caroline: my effort to render the cheap Internet calling options just a little less occluded. May all your minutes be free ones!

    E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

    Correction: January 28, 2011

    The State of the Art column on Thursday, about Internet calling apps, described the capabilities of such apps incorrectly. A few of them allow free calls to regular phone numbers from cellphones; it is not the case that no apps meet that description. David Pogue has written a follow-up post about these apps. The column also misstated the capabilities of Google Voice. Besides offering free domestic calls from your computer, the service also allows free calls from a landline phone and, with the use of an app called Talkatone, from a cellphone. It is not the case that it does not allow free calls from a phone.


    Copyright. The New York Times Company. 2011. All Rights Reserved.

  • Clashes in Cairo Extend Arab World’s Days of Unrest.-

    Amr Nabil/Associated

     

    January 28, 2011

    Clashes in Cairo Extend Arab World’s Days of Unrest

    By ALAN COWELL

    After days of protests in the Arab world that have toppled one president and shaken many others, thousands of demonstrators calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak poured from mosques across the Egyptian capital after noon prayers on Friday, clashing with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons.

    Witnesses said a crowd of at least 10,000 people was moving east from Cairo’s Mohandeseen neighborhood, trying to reach the central Tahrir Square that has been an epicenter of protest. But police lobbed tear-gas to try, blocking their access to a key bridge across the River Nile from the island of Zamalek. Some demonstrators stamped on photographs of the president and others chanted “Down, down with Mubarak.”

    Near Al Azhar mosque in old Cairo, thousands of people flooded onto the streets after noon prayers chanting “The people want to bring down the regime.” Police fired tear-gas and protesters hurled rocks as they sought to break though police lines. From balconies above the street, residents threw water and lemon to protesters whose eyes were streaming with tear gas.

    Similar demonstrations were also reported in the cities of Suez, Alexandria and several others, including Al Arish in northern Sinai.

    According to The Associated Press, police doused one of the most prominent opposition figures, Mohammed ElBaradei, with a water-cannon and beat supporters who tried to shield him. Mr. ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, returned to Cairo on Thursday, promising to join the largely leaderless protests that have so far been propelled by young people.

    Internet and cellphone connections have been disrupted or restricted in Cairo, Alexandria and other places, cutting off social media Web sites that had been used to organize protests and complicating efforts by news media to report on events on the ground. Some reports said journalists had been singled out by police who used batons to beat and charge protesters.

    In Alexandria, as soon as Friday prayers ended, a crowd of protesters streamed out of one mosque, chanting “Wake up, wake up son of my country. Come down Egyptians.”

    Police closed on the crowd, firing tear gas as the demonstrators pelted them with stones. A stone struck the officer firing the gas from the top of the truck in the helmet and the truck pulled back, but reinforcements quickly arrived and officers marshaled a new offensive.

    The protest turned into a block-by-block battle. The riot police managed to push the demonstrators one block back from the mosque, sealing it off from both sides and slowly advancing behind the tear-gas truck.

    Several women shouted “dirty government,” leaning from the balconies of their high-rise apartments to hurl bottles down on the police. Officers pounded their clear shields with their billy clubs and chanted in unison.

    The protests across Egypt have underscored the blistering pace of events that have transformed the Arab world, particularly among regimes that have traditionally enjoyed the support of successive administrations in Washington.

    Earlier this month, entrenched autocracies seemed confident of their ability to ride out the protests. But, just two weeks ago, on Jan. 14, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled abruptly into exile after weeks of protest and his departure emboldened demonstrators to take to the streets in other countries.

    Images of the lowly challenging the mighty have been relayed from one capital to the next, partly through the aggressive coverage of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have given the protesters a potent weapon, enabling them to elude the traditional police measures to monitor and curb dissent. But various regimes have fallen back on a more traditional playbook, relying on security forces to face angry demonstrators on the streets.

    In Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, a focal point of protest, reporters on Friday saw black-uniformed riot police taking up position, pouring from armored trucks, and protesters said several members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition organization, had been arrested overnight.

    On Thursday, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had remained formally aloof from the earlier protests, seemed to be seeking to aligning itself with the youthful and apparently secular demonstrators, saying it would support Friday’s protests. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and an opposition leader, returned from Vienna saying he would join protests, whose passion and scale had taken him by surprise.

    Also on Thursday, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries, demanding the ouster of the 32-year-old American-backed government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, vowing to continue until the government either fell or consented to reforms.

    At least visually, the scenes broadcast across the region from Yemen were reminiscent of the events in Egypt and the month of protests that brought down the government in Tunisia. But as they climaxed by midday, they appeared to be carefully organized and mostly peaceful, save for some arrests. Pink — be it in the form of headbands, sashes or banners — was the dominant color; organizers described it as the symbol of the day’s protests.

    The Yemeni protests were another moment of tumult in a region whose aging order of American-backed governments appears to be staggering, confronting movements with divergent goals but access to similar technology.

    Documents made available by the WikiLeaks antisecrecy group, for instance, offered protesters in Tunisia documentary evidence in confidential American diplomatic communications of the opulent lifestyle of Mr. Ben Ali’s family.

    On Thursday, protesters in Tunisia’s scored a new victory when the interim government purged almost all the cabinet ministers left over from Mr. Ben Ali’s administration.

    Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, Mr. Ben Ali’s former right-hand man, announced the changes in a televised address, but did not resign. He reiterated a pledge to guide the country to free and fair elections within six months and then retire from government. “This is a temporary government with a clear mission — to allow a transition to democracy,” Mr. Ghannouchi said. Another trove of dispatches made public by WikiLeaks paints a vivid picture of the delicate dealings between the United States and Egypt, its staunchest Arab ally. They show in detail how diplomats repeatedly raised concerns with Egyptian officials about jailed dissidents and bloggers, and kept tabs on reports of torture by the police.

    But they also reveal that relations with President Hosni Mubarak warmed up because President Obama played down the public “name and shame” approach of the Bush administration.

    Reporting was contributed by David D. Kirkpatrick, Karim Faheem, Mona El-Naggar and Dawlat Magdy in Cairo; Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet in Alexandria, Egypt; Anthony Shadid and Nada Bakri in Beirut, Lebanon; and Mark Landler and Andrew W. Lehren in Washington.


    Copyright 2011, The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved